So, last weekend of April ended with 4152 weekly players on EU server and 6530 players on RU server.
For the beginning of May, WG prepared piss poor event - discount for a line that is hard to start and ends at tier VII - US bombers. Main prize - turret gunsight, was obtainable for 20 victorious battles. Players said understandable fuck off, and that doesn't impress them much. Which in terms of player numbers meant virtually no change on EU server - 4113 players (39 less, 1%). Russians weren't impressed even more, 6162 players, drop by 6% and 368 heads.
Another week 3rd-10th, another try. Especially that it includes end of II WW in Europe. So event was usual - another emblem and whole day of premium account and 3 crates. Plus discounts for shit that can be bought with money and for planes.
Which in a week between 3rd and 10th of May, such generous event brought 4231 players on EU server (118 more palyers, 3%). Opportunists on RU server as usual apparently were more eager to grab crates, 1599 players more (26%) bumped number of players with 20 or more battles to 7761.
There can't be two generous events in a row, so week 10th-17th had an event, because weekends have events. Immediate and not really surprising reaction were drops on EU server to 4029 players (-5%) and on RU to 5914 (1847 players, 24%).
But WG didn't give up trying, and introduced a moronathon for a totally unneded premium plane - tier VI heavy fighter. In fact - quite OP, 2 37mm cannons with ridiculous 3.5 autoaim degrees, same as other ridiculously OP in terms of firepower Ki-43-II. Anyway - it's tier VII - not the top nor the bottom of middle tier group.
Moronathon had again 4 modes, one printing medals like there is no tomorrow, others sucking balls hard. Grind to get crates, which among other stuff, may contain operation order to start a series of missions to get plane itself. And these missions were a gem, especially that they were to get tier VI plane.
20 missions, a mixture of utter grind and utter luck (or for those playing in the middle of night with a bunch of friends). Or for those who help themselves with a wallet, to collect another useless but power creept tier VI premium plane.
That made in weeke 18th-24th player numbers up to 4639 on EU (610 players more, 15%), and 9121 players on RU server (yep, crates again, bump by 3207 players, 54%).
During last May weekend, moronathon is topped with another event, kind of grindy, but not so hard, with a nice reward (crates, hangar slot).
Which brought no changes for week 25th-31st on EU server - 4644 players, 5 more than during previous week, but on RU server even more opportunists came, bumping headcount to 10288 (+1167, 13%).
Funny, how the same prizes work different on EU and RU servers. EU players barely care: +500 players, with bigger bump during moronathon for a plane started, while RU players hope for stuff that can be spent in WoT - increase of 2/3rd players.
Thursday, June 3, 2021
Saturday, May 1, 2021
Hall of Fame, April 2021
As usual, numer of players means number of players that played 20 or more battles in given week. Each number is taken on Monday from Hall of Fame.
Event for 1-5th offered 4 crates for ~30+ battles, and some negligible whatvers.
Results, as usual for crates, are visible: 12% increase on EU server (+528 players), to 4953, and, opportunistic as usual, 20% increase (+1409 players), to 8476 on RU server.
Still below average for EU, and for RU as well, which means that life support, like other drugs, has to be stronger and stronger over time to achieve the same result. Because team modeas and CW are for whimps. I still wonder, whether goods given with Clan Wars (for tokens, for example) would be so much greater (in terms of money required to buy them) than those given all around during events.
Another week, another event for 9th-13th: this time premium day for having top PP 5 times (tier I mindless grind), and as other irrelevant shit: emblem and 2 G-suits for those who dogfight at top tiers, and crew exp grind.
Unsurprisingly (at least for me), both servers immediately returned to no-crate player levels. EU server lost 14% players, drop by 675 to 4278, RU server lost 17%, drop by 1416 to 7050. Almost exactly players who came for crates left.
WG still trying: borderline irrelevant Tornado(*) pilot marathon finale (March 29th - April 19th), as usual - 15 missions, out of which 12 are easy in terms of skill, some grindy, yey other 3 cry for wallet support. As visible in previous weeks, it didn't encourage new players to play.
(*) Tornado itself is pretty decent tier VI multirole fighter. Maybe even the best - one of those, who can quite often either outrun or outturn enemy. But still tier VI, without any meaning.
So marathon didn't seem work, nothing unusual.
On top of that 16th-19th weekend event was piss-poor - pile of credit hourly bonuses for grind, and whole 20% bonus for aircraft exp for exceptional battle. I guess not really encouraging for grind, or not enough grinding players to bother.
Results are flat line on EU - 34 players more (1%), 4312 total, and on RU players didn't seem to care: 641 less, 9% drop to 6419.
Maybe weekend 23rd-26th could do better? (Un)Surprisingly even shittier event, with only gold ammo (gold ammo in WoWP, lol, this is a topic for separate note) and +200% daily bonus resulted in loss of 160 players (4%) on EU server (to 4152) and 111 influx of players (2%), reaching 6530 on RU. Seems RU players still believe in fools gold.
Another month showing that without strong life support giving things all around, all can WoWP gather on EU server is 4k-ish players.
RU server seems to be still looking for its bottom - on good days (in terms of effort to goods events) there are 2 times more players than on EU, on bad (or rather - usual), a bit more that 1.5 times of EU numbers of players.
Since the end (Monday, March 29th) of March, EU server lost 273 players, RU lost twice more, falling from 7067 to 6530.
Event for 1-5th offered 4 crates for ~30+ battles, and some negligible whatvers.
Results, as usual for crates, are visible: 12% increase on EU server (+528 players), to 4953, and, opportunistic as usual, 20% increase (+1409 players), to 8476 on RU server.
Still below average for EU, and for RU as well, which means that life support, like other drugs, has to be stronger and stronger over time to achieve the same result. Because team modeas and CW are for whimps. I still wonder, whether goods given with Clan Wars (for tokens, for example) would be so much greater (in terms of money required to buy them) than those given all around during events.
Another week, another event for 9th-13th: this time premium day for having top PP 5 times (tier I mindless grind), and as other irrelevant shit: emblem and 2 G-suits for those who dogfight at top tiers, and crew exp grind.
Unsurprisingly (at least for me), both servers immediately returned to no-crate player levels. EU server lost 14% players, drop by 675 to 4278, RU server lost 17%, drop by 1416 to 7050. Almost exactly players who came for crates left.
WG still trying: borderline irrelevant Tornado(*) pilot marathon finale (March 29th - April 19th), as usual - 15 missions, out of which 12 are easy in terms of skill, some grindy, yey other 3 cry for wallet support. As visible in previous weeks, it didn't encourage new players to play.
(*) Tornado itself is pretty decent tier VI multirole fighter. Maybe even the best - one of those, who can quite often either outrun or outturn enemy. But still tier VI, without any meaning.
So marathon didn't seem work, nothing unusual.
On top of that 16th-19th weekend event was piss-poor - pile of credit hourly bonuses for grind, and whole 20% bonus for aircraft exp for exceptional battle. I guess not really encouraging for grind, or not enough grinding players to bother.
Results are flat line on EU - 34 players more (1%), 4312 total, and on RU players didn't seem to care: 641 less, 9% drop to 6419.
Maybe weekend 23rd-26th could do better? (Un)Surprisingly even shittier event, with only gold ammo (gold ammo in WoWP, lol, this is a topic for separate note) and +200% daily bonus resulted in loss of 160 players (4%) on EU server (to 4152) and 111 influx of players (2%), reaching 6530 on RU. Seems RU players still believe in fools gold.
Another month showing that without strong life support giving things all around, all can WoWP gather on EU server is 4k-ish players.
RU server seems to be still looking for its bottom - on good days (in terms of effort to goods events) there are 2 times more players than on EU, on bad (or rather - usual), a bit more that 1.5 times of EU numbers of players.
Since the end (Monday, March 29th) of March, EU server lost 273 players, RU lost twice more, falling from 7067 to 6530.
Sunday, February 7, 2021
Hall of Fame, January 19th, February 1st 2021
Well, I gave up playing WoWP, AW has some grindy campaign and I try grab as much I can for free, so it was hard to geet up and write the note.
Anyway, during the week between January 19th and 25th, on EU server 20+ battles played 5471 players -- 210 less than during previous week (4%). Looks like there were no weekend eveny, but week event (yes, grind during a week, with required insanely high skill level for players that could really benefit from the event: 7k PP during the battle, 15 battles if missions could be done in parallel, 30 if not) offered de facto free hangar spot and some tokens on top, which apparently (surprice surprise) didn't stop players leaving.
On RU server drop was relatively twice as big - 10500 players played, 910 less than diring previous week (8%).
Another week - January 26th - February 1st brought top of the tree event for Bf 109 line, with some grindy missions for everything, even crates (3, unique ones, for 100k damage done, 10-15 battles - about 2-3 hours of play in best case of having tier X, having only tier VIII - good luck).
Looks like it attracted players even less, as on EU server 20+ battles played 5236 players - another 235 and another steady 4% less.
RU server increases dynamics - 9226 players. 12% and 1274 less.
Looks like the only being that doesn't ask itself "why to grind for, if there is no endgame?", is WG. Or they ask themselves, and all the time have same answer "because they are". Pretty nice attitude, comparing themselvs to Himalayas. Or maybe rather to Pokemons. Only that in "gotta catch them all" Pokemons case there is really nothing after catching them all. Even grinding for crates and getting dropped premium planes, or grinding free gold for higher tier premium planes boils down to the question "what for?", and doesn't attract.
And another straw - on EU server doing nothing Helpers accounts are still active. So much about in-game reporting system. Apparently they can't ban player for doing nothing, because it would destroy KPIs. As for me, player doing nothing and dragging side down does much more damage to KPIs, as other players, dragged down by dead weight, will sooner or later leave the game (which they started not far ago, so they didn't waste much time, so leaving will be easy). Which means that other KPIs will get bigger kick in the groin than after banning 2 hollow accounts, letting a number of others play with less frustration, probably some time more.
Or frustration has to be main force driving players in WoWP (as in other World of Whatever games), which doesn't work pretty well for any of them.
Anyway, during the week between January 19th and 25th, on EU server 20+ battles played 5471 players -- 210 less than during previous week (4%). Looks like there were no weekend eveny, but week event (yes, grind during a week, with required insanely high skill level for players that could really benefit from the event: 7k PP during the battle, 15 battles if missions could be done in parallel, 30 if not) offered de facto free hangar spot and some tokens on top, which apparently (surprice surprise) didn't stop players leaving.
On RU server drop was relatively twice as big - 10500 players played, 910 less than diring previous week (8%).
Another week - January 26th - February 1st brought top of the tree event for Bf 109 line, with some grindy missions for everything, even crates (3, unique ones, for 100k damage done, 10-15 battles - about 2-3 hours of play in best case of having tier X, having only tier VIII - good luck).
Looks like it attracted players even less, as on EU server 20+ battles played 5236 players - another 235 and another steady 4% less.
RU server increases dynamics - 9226 players. 12% and 1274 less.
Looks like the only being that doesn't ask itself "why to grind for, if there is no endgame?", is WG. Or they ask themselves, and all the time have same answer "because they are". Pretty nice attitude, comparing themselvs to Himalayas. Or maybe rather to Pokemons. Only that in "gotta catch them all" Pokemons case there is really nothing after catching them all. Even grinding for crates and getting dropped premium planes, or grinding free gold for higher tier premium planes boils down to the question "what for?", and doesn't attract.
And another straw - on EU server doing nothing Helpers accounts are still active. So much about in-game reporting system. Apparently they can't ban player for doing nothing, because it would destroy KPIs. As for me, player doing nothing and dragging side down does much more damage to KPIs, as other players, dragged down by dead weight, will sooner or later leave the game (which they started not far ago, so they didn't waste much time, so leaving will be easy). Which means that other KPIs will get bigger kick in the groin than after banning 2 hollow accounts, letting a number of others play with less frustration, probably some time more.
Or frustration has to be main force driving players in WoWP (as in other World of Whatever games), which doesn't work pretty well for any of them.
Tuesday, January 26, 2021
Corssair, Bf 109, Fw 190 and stuff
Here goes (another from Greg's channell) great YouTube videa comparing US Navy fighters: Corsaira and Hellcata with German fighters - Bf 109a and Fw 190a. It shows, how WoWP planes are biased:
Saturday, January 23, 2021
Hall of Fame, January 12-18th
A surprise - contrary to my prediction, free tokens seem to draw players back to game.
On EU server 20 or more battles played 5681 players, 16% more than during previous week, which means that 3/4ths of last week loses were regained.
On RU server similar change - 11410 players, 23% more than during previous week, which means more players attracted back than left.
We'll see, how the same approach will work this week.
On EU server 20 or more battles played 5681 players, 16% more than during previous week, which means that 3/4ths of last week loses were regained.
On RU server similar change - 11410 players, 23% more than during previous week, which means more players attracted back than left.
We'll see, how the same approach will work this week.
Sunday, January 17, 2021
Hall of Fame, January 5-11
In said week, on EU server 20 or more battles, played 4909 players. That gives (or rather takes) 1037 players less than during previous week - 17% less.
On RU server happened something similar - 18% drop, by 2101, to 9271.
No pay, no play. There is still some space to the bottom.
And there is another factor making players leaving.
Since some time, there are inactive accounts names Helper_001 and Helper_003, they are formed in flight and do nothing in battle. Of course it's a burden for their team, which is reflected in their WR. I suspect that there is one correlating player in the opposite side that sets up WR, but WG support (they tent to be very picky in WR), this time didn't give a fuck. After providing screenshots from afterbatle report and from Hall of Fame, showing perpetual inactivity, I've got standard answer that ther is an in-game reporting system, and I should use that. Fuck yeah. Some cursing on chat and here comes Friday ban, but 4 weeks of doing nothing ends with... nothing.
Job, as usual, well done, WG.
On RU server happened something similar - 18% drop, by 2101, to 9271.
No pay, no play. There is still some space to the bottom.
And there is another factor making players leaving.
Since some time, there are inactive accounts names Helper_001 and Helper_003, they are formed in flight and do nothing in battle. Of course it's a burden for their team, which is reflected in their WR. I suspect that there is one correlating player in the opposite side that sets up WR, but WG support (they tent to be very picky in WR), this time didn't give a fuck. After providing screenshots from afterbatle report and from Hall of Fame, showing perpetual inactivity, I've got standard answer that ther is an in-game reporting system, and I should use that. Fuck yeah. Some cursing on chat and here comes Friday ban, but 4 weeks of doing nothing ends with... nothing.
Job, as usual, well done, WG.
Thursday, January 7, 2021
Hall of Fame, December 29th - January 4th (2021)
Lookss like WG, despite years, is still looking, what makes player play. Play more, that means.
On EU server, still keeping up event kept 5946 players doing 20 or more battles, 1% and 71 players more than during previous week. Not much change, there still were tokens to grab.
Contrary, on RU server there were 11372 such players, which means 25% drop comparing to previous week - 3801 players less, more than half of the influx noticed 2 weeks before.
It's really hard to believe, that nobody in WG understands what's going on, but the pattern is evident. Constant inflation of pay for play approach makes players more picky. The thing that drags them to play is constantly free gold that can be spend in WoT. Period.
Tokens work only for WoWP players, because for WG premium account one needs a shitload of them. And premium account for tokens got watered down - in WoWP it's barely noticeable, due to beancounting additive way of applying bonuses, and in WoT and WoWS it's watered down, as these games got own kind of premium account. Beancounting strikes back. And to get such acocunt, player needs to invest a shitload of time, to gather 150 tokens. So much, that there is no time to play other games during grind, and going one month in WoWP and one in WoT doesn't make WoT grind faster.
Free exp is just a mere bonus, nice to have, but nothing worth time investment needed to maximize the amount of.
Other drops from crates, like WoWP materials, is barely worth mentioning - it's only used to play WoWP more, and here we are again at the lack of endgame and team mode topic - there is not much reason to paly WoWP more.
Pay for play doesn't work. Didn't work in WoWP 1.x, even more doesn't work in version 2.x. Endgame content or life support, and WG constantly chooses the worse option. Kind of funny, as it looks like beancounting paper looses from free gold, free exp, free premium planes and other free shitt are now much higher han could be from team mode, even with 1.5 exp and credits multiplier (oh my, players could grind faster, and remember, its + in WoWP, not *) and from WoWP Stronghold-analogue.
So new year is going to look as previous one: life support with skeletal crew, to avoid a major PR fuckup by admitting, that Wargaming.net is in fact a company of one game (and a half).
For me - ok, there will be more pay for play, so more free stuff to hoard.
On EU server, still keeping up event kept 5946 players doing 20 or more battles, 1% and 71 players more than during previous week. Not much change, there still were tokens to grab.
Contrary, on RU server there were 11372 such players, which means 25% drop comparing to previous week - 3801 players less, more than half of the influx noticed 2 weeks before.
It's really hard to believe, that nobody in WG understands what's going on, but the pattern is evident. Constant inflation of pay for play approach makes players more picky. The thing that drags them to play is constantly free gold that can be spend in WoT. Period.
Tokens work only for WoWP players, because for WG premium account one needs a shitload of them. And premium account for tokens got watered down - in WoWP it's barely noticeable, due to beancounting additive way of applying bonuses, and in WoT and WoWS it's watered down, as these games got own kind of premium account. Beancounting strikes back. And to get such acocunt, player needs to invest a shitload of time, to gather 150 tokens. So much, that there is no time to play other games during grind, and going one month in WoWP and one in WoT doesn't make WoT grind faster.
Free exp is just a mere bonus, nice to have, but nothing worth time investment needed to maximize the amount of.
Other drops from crates, like WoWP materials, is barely worth mentioning - it's only used to play WoWP more, and here we are again at the lack of endgame and team mode topic - there is not much reason to paly WoWP more.
Pay for play doesn't work. Didn't work in WoWP 1.x, even more doesn't work in version 2.x. Endgame content or life support, and WG constantly chooses the worse option. Kind of funny, as it looks like beancounting paper looses from free gold, free exp, free premium planes and other free shitt are now much higher han could be from team mode, even with 1.5 exp and credits multiplier (oh my, players could grind faster, and remember, its + in WoWP, not *) and from WoWP Stronghold-analogue.
So new year is going to look as previous one: life support with skeletal crew, to avoid a major PR fuckup by admitting, that Wargaming.net is in fact a company of one game (and a half).
For me - ok, there will be more pay for play, so more free stuff to hoard.
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